


The road we walk

by Nookiio



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Growing Old, Love, M/M, Post-Reichenbach, Pre-Season/Series 03, life and death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-22
Updated: 2017-05-13
Packaged: 2018-10-22 18:10:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10702362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nookiio/pseuds/Nookiio
Summary: He had had a plan. Not overly detailed, but more or less worked out. There were things that should happen and things that naturally could, whether he wanted them or not, but in the end he would return to John, and they would work it all out. Then things go awry and Sherlock loses everything - or does he get a chance that he had never imagined?





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> My first posting of my first "real" fanfic, bear with me... Grateful for every read and review, all thoughts are welcome! :) This first chapter is a prologue, a great heap of stuff we all already know... More to come. :)

He had had a plan. A little blurry in the edges, not overly detailed, but he had had the framework more or less worked out.

He had anticipated that it would take him a few years to destroy the lifework of Moriarty since he had only scratched the surface of the meandering, multi-faceted net. Even if the spider in the middle was dead, his criminal organisation lived on in an in some parts autonomous concern, and Sherlock didn’t only ascribe it to his own ego that he knew he was the only one who could pick it apart, destroy it: also the one who had to do it, just because he could.

He knew that it would be dangerous, that he would both be hurt and the one to hurt others in many ways before it would all be over. In the periphery of his mind, most often – when it didn’t stare him in the eye if the form of knives aiming for his kidney, or exploding cars that he had been sitting in just seconds before – sat the realization that he could die before it all was over. His survival instincts had never been well developed (which Mycroft still sighed about, but so much more discreet now). John had helped with that: in different ways. On several occasions Sherlock had survived solely because John Watson had drawn his illegal gun and shot whoever who had tried to kill him this time.

Had not Mike Stamford chosen that bench that afternoon before he had withdrawn to his cramped office to correct essays, Sherlock Holmes would’ve been dead the day after. Yes, chance, not chess, the odds had been 50:50 – but that was not the point. Had not John Watson chosen Sherlock’s side within 2 minutes from meeting him (in his heart (unconsciously); in his mind (consciously) at Sherlock’s “Would you like to see some more?” the evening after) when he had, it was rather unlikely that Sherlock would have been alive to ever meet James Moriarty at all. Not a meeting of which he cherished the memory, mind: the Game had been one thing – seeing John strapped up in explosives was another one entirely.

If not Moriarty had got himself interested in Sherlock, they probably would never have met. Moriarty’s net expanded all over Europe with branches like smoke gusts sneaking their way to all the other continents. Sherlock had always kept track of all the crimes he could ever read about, but rarely had had any first-hand access to cases not handled by Scotland Yard, and Lestrade, which narrowed it down considerably. Therefore, it was all possible that he never would have seen there was a net at all. Sometimes contemplated it, naturally, his mind always trying to make connections that while improbable still were not impossible; but Moriarty was Moriarty. Part of the disguise was the range of businesses the man had kept going: Moriarty too had invented his job himself. He had kept himself going in all fields that made money.

Had not Moriarty descended himself in London to play with Sherlock, he would never have been stopped. He was that good, and that fearsome, and mad and brilliant – but Sherlock knew all about how it was to be bored.

Sherlock had not been entirely sure about John still being with him at the end of it. Not after him dismantling the web, (surviving), but the years that he had planned to continue solving cases in London, followed by a rather calm life on the countryside, where he should keep bees and write books and possibly engage in video calls from some DI that would need his brain even though his body no longer would be fit for the never-slowing tempo of the London underworld. He knew that John wanted children, a traditional family, that Sherlock never could be able to give him: not sure that he would’ve, had the opportunity presented itself. He could share his life with John, the life he had and all of it to be honest and he would’ve been glad to do so, had it just been his choice. But he had never been entirely sure that John would find that enough, at length, even though he for the time being was content (his non-limp told enough).

There had been a plan of dismantling the web and gathering evidence to clear his name, to reunite with John whatever life he would live at the time (this was an uncertainty that made dark butterflies flutter their wings in his chest) and then live at Baker Street (this was also up to John, what this part would look like, but there was nothing he could do about it, unsolvable without facts). Cases and then cottage, bees, and in the end hopefully falling to sleep and never waking up. Then silence.

That had been the plan.

The plan had not, in any version, contained him being strangled to death on a dark, scruffy backstreet in Copenhagen, of all the cities to die in.

You could just die once. In that respect, it hit him as so unbearably _dull_ to meet his end at the calloused hands of an unemployed sailor with anger management issues, a blond daughter between the ages of 14.7 and 16.2, and with a neighbour that had a ginger cat and a fondness for lemongrass.

And John… John would’ve shot the man, or punched him or kicked him to save Sherlock this time too, had he been with him. But Sherlock had left John behind to save his life, if not his soul, and that was the last thought that Sherlock Holmes ever had.


	2. Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Step by step... :)

Time was a different matter when you were dead. There _was_ no time, and no space, and certainly no light waiting for you on the other side.

Or maybe all was light, the world gone: the background was not black at all, but contained all the colours of the universe, blending together to leave just the impression of white, blindingly clear.

Light. Song. Silence. Shades moving around him, dancing, their teeth snapping after him, a manic glint in their eyes: but they had no eyes, and no bodies, and their outlines thinned out to nothing and they were not, after all, and he was alone.

_John?_

He felt a presence, something familiar that passed him in the darkness: something warm, and caring, that used to have one eyebrow a little more raised than the other and always kept his appearance impeccable, whatever the time and the circumstances. Vaguely, he remembered annoyance, as felt by himself a long time ago, when there was time, and he wondered for what, really, and why it had been so important. The presence didn’t slow down, just passed him and disappeared deeper into the darkness, and he felt a stab of regret, because he didn’t want him to go.

_JohnJohnJohn._

All is black, and all is nothing.

He senses a different point in the darkness, somewhere not too far, a shifting atmosphere of _something_ , and he tries to find it. It takes form as he is closing in, solidifies into the single steady point in this entire infinite everything of darkness. He tries to focus on it, and room is created out of limbo.

It is a vast frame of white stone. The darkness inside it differs from the nothingness surrounding it – more like fluid velvet; billowing, opaque. He moves around it, gets to the back, but there is just a flat stone surface. He continues to move around it, back to the front, and it is a door. As black as before, but certainly a door – and doors are meant to lead to places. He would prefer any place to this, and the door is opening – and if all was dark then all is light, and it is just like there is another side after all.

He comes to in an apartment. It materializes around him from empty nothingness in a way that for an instant threatens to crush him back to that place which is already slipping from his memory. But he stays, and he is he, and for a moment the world collides into itself because there is a world, and he is in it and he can not understand that there may not be one: but it clears up, straightens out, and room is room yet again.

He is he, and it feels astoundingly complex. There are memories, and things he knows and remembers, but they are distant, like there are roads that lead to them but of which he only is seeing the beginning.

He has a body, sort of, and he looks at his hands and remembers that he is a person, and that he got a name. He touches his face, that is a face, and it is unbelievably smooth. (Are not faces meant to be that? He can’t be sure yet.)

He looks around, and the world solidifies some more. He is in a room, rather small, the light flooding in through Venetian blinds in the window, making a pattern of light and shades over the floor. Thoughts can no longer change the things that are now determined, set: there are mats, and book cases and chairs and wall papers. There is an old wooden clock on the wall and it shows eleven thirty, and Sherlock Holmes remembers time.

 


	3. John

The room had once been a guestroom, and then turned into a child’s chamber, and now it is rarely used at all. There is a sofa, a low table, and a high book case filled with a wide assortment of books. On the wall hangs a wooden clock, its pendulum neatly swinging back and forth in an exact, never-ending manner, and framed photographs of different sizes.

He knows things about this room, yet he has never seen it before. It is like he could feel its history like someone would determine temperature and smell upon entering a room; the most recent ones telling the most, but older, more faded ones still lingering, adding their part to the story.

The walls were once painted when a family moved here, and some years later fitted with a softly coloured wall paper when it had become a nursery. The child in question has grown, the wall paper has been changed once, twice, and since the teenager left his parents’ home the room itself has become the labelless, nameless room with mismatched furniture that it now is. The photos have been mounted on the walls one by one as time has passed, until no more were added, and now the newest one is several decades old. The frames are layered with dust.

To his right is the bookcase. He stretches out his hand to touch the books, but it passes right through them, as immaterial as a thought. Through and through his hand goes, through the books, the shelves, even a wooden box amidst them all, but at the wall behind them his hand finds solid rest. Or becomes solid itself from the contact, it’s not entirely clear. He splays his fingers over the wallpaper he can’t see; for the band of the lexicon his arm disappears into, but he can tell its texture; papery, matte.

So, wall, but not bookcase. He takes a few steps forward, a test; the floor is solid, he can walk without obstacle. He tries the wooden table, but his hand just passes through, as with the old chair, the lamp and the desk towards the far wall.

The clock on the wall is ticking, rhythmically and he lifts his hand up to it and feels the smooth, cool surface of the glass covering the pendulum. He can see a faint, faint reflection of himself in the dark glass, but also the striped light flooding in from the blinds in the window behind him; through him.

He strokes his finger up towards the white face of the clock and it remains perfectly solid. _So_ , he thinks, _time is touchable_. He is on his way, but stops himself: that metaphor has to wait, his reasoning still too raw, unassembled. He lets his hand drop.

To his right is the only door to the room, and it is standing slightly ajar. Outside is a dimly lit hallway with a rug on the floor, a mirror, and he can see two more doors leading from it. He tries to push it more open but his hand yet again just passes through, as does his whole body when he takes a step forward. Well, he thinks, wall, clock, but not door. With enough data the deciding pattern should emerge.

At that exact moment several things occur. He realizes that for one, the hallway opens up to a living room to his left, and daylight is flowing in from a large window on the far wall. He registers that the furniture he now can see in the hallway and glimpse from the living room are what he would consider modern; but also quite worn, from being through a lot. He feels more than he can actually smell the dust that during years has seeped into the different fabrics, oozed in between shelves and frames: senses the microscopic stains on the leather sofa’s lower part, from the splatter when someone lost the grip of a glass pitcher which broke when it hit the floor; thirty-seven years ago.

These things occur to him, his consciousness, but doesn’t keep his attention for long – because at the table beneath the window sits an old man, who in the middle of lifting a cup to his lips suddenly turns his head towards Sherlock as if startled by the sound of that pitcher breaking, unable to not turn towards the sound; an instinctive reaction. The hand holding the cup trembles perceptively and the tea is dangerously close to splashing over the rim; but does not, divine providence or else.

He is dressed in a washed out, soft shirt and a slipover, his trousers a faded dark and held in place by a belt. Clothes that belong with their person after spending many years together – conforming to each other, the way old clothes on old people may. The crocheted tablecloth under his elbow, the paper opened to the daily radio and cross-word section, and a quiet that speaks of many long days just like this one. His hair is white, the wrinkles from before now more numerous and pronounced; his skin softer, looser.

His eyes, looking at Sherlock, are as blue and clear as they ever were. His eyes, Sherlock realizes where he stands frozen, absorbing all the details his senses can supply him with – the clothes, earthy colours, soft, old; the cup, white with a golden rim, one piece out of an extensive set, not something the man would’ve chosen but now uses, and has for many years; the tremor in his hand, in his hands, but not noticeable on the one resting on the table, and having nothing at all to do with memories of war; the golden ring on his finger, a part of him, close to never removed in the fortysomething years since it made its home there; the window behind him, the daylight, autumn, a tree visible in its dying cycle between this building and the identical one next to it – his eyes, which cannot see him.

Sherlock doesn’t breathe and meets John’s gaze. Just for a moment, too short; before John’s look wanders away from him, still searching for whatever it was that made him look up, the sound, the sensation, whatever it was that so instinctively caught his attention. The hallway, the sofa set, a quick sweep up to the clock on the wall, the only thing moving in the room, to all of the ordinary furniture and objects that in no way have done anything to pull him away from the contemplation of “glowing, lambent”, 8 letters.

When he can’t find anything he reluctantly returns to the paper in front of him, but is not immediately at rest. He glances sideways towards the doorway a couple of times before he, eventually, seems to let it go and concentrates on the cross-word again.

Sherlock remains where he is, starts to breathe again – not that he needs the oxygen, and that’s probably just as well – and feels how his body, limb by limb, relaxes, even though he never realized that he had gone rigid. He rests a hand on the doorframe, solid, painted wood, cool to his touch, and then his head and his shoulder too. He feels exhausted, drained, almost boneless and he closes his eyes to John, his John, the living room, this flat with its own rules of existence, and trembles when he lets go of a long breath.

What in the whole wide world is this supposed to mean?

 


	4. Tranquility

John is an old man. He is a widower, and has been married for many years of his life. He has children, has had children; there is an ambiguity concerning that.

He is interested in cross-words.

That alone halts Sherlock’s deduction for a minute.

Cross-words. He shakes his head.

John cannot see him, that much is clear. Sherlock has been sitting on the floor, since the sofa isn’t solid to him, for almost 40 minutes watching John furrow his forehead, and now and then scratch down a word or two.

What daily paper’s cross-word would take John that long?

He has studied John’s face, concentrated as the man is, and mapped his wrinkles to memory; compared the picture with the one he had there, sorted out which ones he had anticipated and those which have appeared anyway. His hair is white and a pair of glasses lie beside him on the table. The ticking from the clock behind Sherlock is the only sound in the room aside from the ones that John produces when he shifts in his chair, scratches his head, takes a sip from the cup of his now presumably cold tea, and the clink from the china when he puts it back on the saucer. Sherlock can hear all of it easily enough, just nine feet of air between them, but he himself makes no sound at all. He noticed when he sat down, folding his long legs in upon himself, that he could hear the faintest of a ruffle from the fabric of his clothes, but also that it wasn’t a sound in the same space as the room, definitely not audible to John. It was like a glass wall separated them, but at the same time Sherlock certainly did sit on the floor, feeling the smooth surface under his hands. He breathes out, a breath that he doesn’t really need but can chose to perform anyway, and he hears the faint, faint gust of it: but that is all.

After a while John looks up to the clock, and then rises to his feet. He takes it a little slower than he once did, but not overly so. His body is older, more fragile, but many past years of keeping a strong physique have delayed the decline. He takes his cup and its saucer and leaves the room through a doorway at the other end of the room from where Sherlock came, and Sherlock stays where he is for a moment, just to check. He can still hear John rummage through a cupboard in the kitchen, even though he cannot see him. _Okay_. A wall between them changes nothing.

When Sherlock enters the kitchen, John has put a saucepan on the stove to boil some water and is filling up a glass of water from the tap. He has a pillbox on the sink and tips his head back to swallow them down; a routine action, something he does almost without thinking. The water starts to boil and he adds some pasta, puts the lid on, and turns down the heat. He goes to sit down at the table while he waits, and knowing that it makes no difference at all to John, Sherlock waits with him.

John’s days are long, and silent. There is lunch at midday and tea at three o’clock. When the neighbor’s kids pass John’s door on their way home from school John halts himself, seemingly unconsciously, and listens to their mix of laughter and bickering until the door slams behind them and all sounds are shut off. It often takes him a moment longer to continue with whatever it was he was doing, but Sherlock senses that he doesn’t even register this himself.

There are seldom visitors. For the first couple of days of Sherlock’s mostly immaterial existence in this flat, John’s only human interaction is the occasional wave to a neighbor when he gets the paper in the morning.

On the fifth day, there is a knock on the door. Sherlock has noticed that John keeps the door unlocked during the day when he is at home, and the visitor doesn’t wait for him to get up from the armchair and come to open it, she just steps inside.

She is a dark-haired woman in her forties with a straight back and kind eyes. The two of them are familiar, she immediately goes into the kitchen and starts unpacking the groceries that she has brought, but they are not related. She is chatting away about this and that, gossip from the neighborhood, what her cousin the vet assistant has told her about pigeons, what the deal of the week at the local supermarket was. John is answering in monosyllables as she is doing most of the conversing, mostly over her shoulder as she is putting away packets and containers in the cupboards and cabinets. It’s clearly a routine of theirs, and Sherlock can see John smile a small smile almost all the way through.

Her name is Rosa, and she is not his daughter.

When she is done, she prepares tea and they share some chocolate biscuits between them. John’s face, often so relaxed and unengaged when he is alone, comes to life with a twinkle of the eyes and the to and fro of their amicable conversation.

When she has left, after he tries to ask her what he owe her for the groceries and she smilingly denies him an answer, the stillness of the flat is almost deafening. Sherlock watches John pick up the pepper shaker and put it down an inch further to the left, rearrange the pots on the windowsill to adjust the space between them, and straighten the angle of the mat in the hallway. After a while he comes to sit at the table looking out onto the road and grassy area outside, where not much can be seen but for the occasional bicyclist passing by.

When the evening comes, John has watched the news on the television, showered, and eaten a light snack. He changes into pajamas and goes to bed. He lies there for some time staring into the darkness, his eyes wide open, and Sherlock wonders so what he is thinking about.

When he finally closes his eyes and goes to sleep Sherlock sits on the floor with his back to the bedroom wall. Sherlock himself doesn’t seem to tire in this form and therefore doesn’t  need to sleep, and he settles in to wake over John’s sleeping form. He can feel the vibrations and the different shades and fabrics of this flat, which constitute all that he knows of this time and place.

This is John, his John, and this is the life he is living. Sherlock can hear the ticking of the clock from two rooms away, and he rests his head against the wall, listening to the faint sound of John’s breathing in the night.

This is John’s life as it has become, and Sherlock doesn’t know what to think of it.

 


End file.
